Right to the City in Greater Beirut: Context Assessment in Light of the Refugee and Displacement Crisis

Location :

Cairo and Beirut

Date :

14 April 2018

Abstract :

This HLRN publication offers critical insight into municipal governance in Greater Beirut, a city largely formed and characterized by human migration through its history, while more recently afflicted by displacement due to local and regional conflicts. With some 1.5 million persons in Lebanon uprooted by the war in Syria since 2011, Beirut is a prime example of how the global responsibility for the refugee crisis is discharged locally. This new study, explores how Beirut copes with the challenges.

Right to the City in Greater Beirut is the outcome of the Sanctuary in the City: Beirut project carried out jointly by Housing and Land Rights Network (Cairo) and Amel Association (Lebanon) to explore how established norms and principles of good local governance, as well as the experience of other global cities, could serve as tools and techniques to meet Greater Beirut’s current challenges. It reflects training outcomes, survey findings and deliberations with project participants representing the refugee community, civil society, municipalities and local authorities.

The assessment also reflects the structure and content of another project outcome, the draft “Greater Beirut Right-to-the-City Charter” (in Annex).